The Stupidest Answer In The World — There's a great article in the NY Times Magazine section today about Obama's quest to win the white male vote which was written by Matt Bai. In it Obama addresses the “bitter quote”: … I made a boneheaded move this week as well with this quote …

Al-Qaeda Web Forums Abruptly Taken Offline — Separately, Sunnis and Shiites Wage Online War — Four of the five main online forums that al-Qaeda's media wing uses to distribute statements by Osama bin Laden and other extremists have been disabled since mid-September, monitors of the Web sites say.

Due next from Apple: refreshed 20- and 24-inch iMacs — Assuming last minute snags are avoided, the coming weeks should bring new iMacs, rounding out Apple's 2008 hardware introductions as the company enters the holiday shopping season with one of its strongest product portfolios ever.

Some Of These Layoffs Aren't Really Layoffs — I've spoken to a lot of CEOs this week who are going through layoffs or who are thinking of going through going through layoffs. The list of those who've pulled the trigger gets longer every day, and the unparty seems to just be getting started based on the email flow that we're seeing.

FriendFeed to add Realtime APIs next week — Play in Popup | Download — Twitter appears to have an unassailable lead in users and their resultant Follow clouds. Though Track is dead and IM is postponed indefinitely, the service has added a political track page with a company-selected keyword cluster around the political race.

Mitsubishi LaserVue 65" HDTV - We Meet Again … Specifications — Images — Introduction — Kurtis and I got another chance to check out Mitsubishi's LaserVue DLP set in the early morning hours this Tuesday, and this time we were armed with some juicy, hand-picked HD goodness.

Pressflip Founder Quits: “I'm Tired Of The Fight” — One thing investors don't really like to see is founders abandoning the startups they funded. But that is exactly what Ted Dziuba is doing with his startup PressFlip. — In a blog post Dziuba wrote that he was leaving the company …

Surprise! Venture investments falling — No one should be surprised to hear that venture investment dropped during the last three months, with notable decreases in first-time financings and Internet investment. And the worst is probably still to come, since Q3 numbers don't reflect the recent meltdown of the finance industry.

Google monetizes start page, vocal minority gets vocal — If you love something, set it free. Then, if you're lucky, maybe you can figure out a way to make money with it. Despite what appears to be a vocal minority that is unhappy with the changes, that's what Google may have finally …

Move over pinochle, Web surfing stimulates aging brains — Functional MRI brain scans show how searching the Internet dramatically engages brain neural networks (in red). The image on the left displays brain activity while reading a book; the image on the right displays activity while engaging in an Internet search.